Sunlight
by Lycan-Song
Summary: A Soriku piece. Riku isn't ready for Sora to know how he really feels about him, but that doesn't stop Riku stealing some moments from him. As sunlight blazes down on them, why is Riku about to go cold?


**Sunlight**

**(Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any associated ideas to do with them. In short, I own nothing except the laptop I used to type this up. Everything is owned by Square Enix and the Disney Corporation jointly, two fantastic thingys of this world which deserve much applauding.**

**This is my first Soriku piece and it has a continuation that I'll post up a few days after this. Soriku is one of my favourite shonen-ai pairings and let's face it, is as good as canon in the games. Hope you like it and feel free to leave a review!)**

Sunlight blazed strong and hot down on the Biology stairwell, powerful rays unchecked by a cloudless blue sky. It was almost the summer holidays. The exams were in full swing and that meant the nerds were on the war path. They were aggressive little buggers, swarming as black masses round this time of year, seizing all the best "study spots" which basically included everything they set their eyes upon from corridors and lunch tables, to areas of the study centre and library. It was big money betting on how long it would take until one of them got punched.

This school was so messed up. All the TV shows promised you that nerds were pale little things that got shoved into trashcans and lockers by the bigger people who didn't burn in sunlight. In this school, it was the opposite. The nerds were vicious and smart. Push one into a trashcan and they would go ape on your ass, pouring out from the shadows to pelt you with calculators.

This bizarreness didn't concern Riku though; weather like today would keep the nerds away. You couldn't study in sunlight; the pages reflected it and blinded the nerd so it scurried away like a cockroach, hiding in the dark with its glowing yellow eyes, clawing nerdy hands, bendy antennae and a strange fear of large keys.

Riku looked down at Sora, lying stretched out on the tarmac next to their hiding place below the stairs. His blazer and tie were off, discarded to drape over the banister nearby. This day was too hot for such things; the sun turned a dark blue blazer into a navy-coloured oven and made it seem ten times heavier than normal. The physics teacher said heat didn't have a mass, ha! Wear a school uniform, old man! ... Actually on second thoughts, please don't, he was a half-decent teacher, and Riku didn't want to see him arrested, he wanted that to happen to the chemistry teacher.

Sora had his eyes closed, enjoying the warmth on his face, his chest rising and falling as he breathed slowly.

Sometimes Riku felt guilty that he was lying to Sora. They had been friends since forever. Literally _forever_, Riku's earliest memory was Sora falling into a rock pool and coming up covered in seaweed. His mum had promptly picked him up and thrown a towel over him while Riku laughed so loudly that Sora's mum had thrown a towel over him too to quieten him.

It was stuff like that which made Sora... Sora. He was fun to be around and Riku loved him like a... lately it hadn't been totally clear. Something had happened in Riku. It had started a few weeks before his dad had given him the awkward and by the end drunken talk about puberty. Sora had begun to look... different. Not a bad sort of different, he was still Sora and he always would be, but now he looked... nice.

It was a weird feeling, and it had grown. Thinking back, Riku knew he could have fought it, he could have fought off the fantasies that had begun forming in his head about Sora, he could have stopped himself feeling this way, he could have blocked it out and thought about something else, and most of all he could have stopped himself from lying to his friend.

Riku lowered his head back until it touched the brick wall he was sitting against, the sun continuing to beat relentlessly down on him. It had always been their relationship that Riku, being a year older, told Sora what the world was like and Sora believed him without question. When Riku got things wrong, like when he had told Sora the white stuff in the waves was washing powder, they had just laughed about it when they found out otherwise.

This kind of thing wasn't as simple as a chemical reaction occurring in sea water though. This was way more complicated.

It had started with a change in the way Riku hugged him. Riku had begun to hold on longer than usual and Sora hadn't minded, he'd just kept the hug going too. Then Riku had began to hug him tighter, and lower, arms wrapping around the small of Sora's back rather than their usual place around his shoulders, and Riku had begun to appreciate Sora's smell more. It was sick and random, but he couldn't help it.

A few weeks later and Riku had begun playing with his hair, just absently when they had been watching Saw and Sora hadn't realised it was a horror movie yet.

"This once has a puppet in it, Sora."

"A puppet! Get it, get it, get it! I like puppets."

He hadn't liked this puppet. Riku had had to burn the movie in the yard while Sora hid behind him. It was a difficult thing to explain to the guy at Xtravision why Riku was handing a charred lump of goo back instead of the disc he had left with.

The great thing about that movie was that Sora was a wuss and he had asked if Riku could stay over the following night. Playing Xbox until four in the morning in pyjamas amidst a growing pile of sweet wrappers, and then having to sleep next to Sora in his bed to protect him from homicidal Jigsaws, it had been a good night. Sora was so warm.

Then things got worse. It had been months and Sora hadn't questioned a single thing so far, the part of Riku that wanted Sora, the weak part of him that Riku wished wasn't there, was becoming more daring. Soon, friendship began to include holding Sora's hands while they walked home via the shortcut past the waterfalls. Then it included occasionally stopping while they were swimming to tread water as Riku stroked the wet hairs from Sora's face.

The last big thing happened three weeks ago when, after putting Sora in a headlock, Riku had kissed him on the top of the head. It hadn't been planned; it had just been an impulse, a bizarre reflex Riku hadn't known could exist, let alone one that _he_ had. After he'd done it, Sora had just looked up at him, the same grin on his face as the one he'd had before when he'd been laughing while trying to put up a feeble attempt of resistance against Riku wrestling him. Sora hadn't minded the kiss, he hadn't questioned it, he'd trusted Riku.

It was this that got to Riku. How much did Sora really know? People liked to think Sora was dumb, but Riku knew otherwise, Sora picked up on things, he remembered things for months when they'd only been mentioned once. Had he figured out that what Riku was exploring wasn't just normal friendship stuff, or did he really believe it was just how things changed as people grew up? Did he feel the same way about Riku as Riku felt about him? Had he been feeling the exact same attraction too? When Sora smiled, was it because he liked what was happening, or was it just because he wasn't aware anything had changed? Was it requited love or was it ignorance?

Riku wanted to talk to Sora about it. This was the sort of thing he needed Sora for; to listen to him when he had to whinge about something so Sora could cheer him up by pulling a face and making a joke. Riku wanted to find out what his friend was really feeling, but at the same time, he really really _really_ didn't want to say anything. Things were good the way they were, things were fine. It was enough for Riku to keep things like this. Or was it? If they were, then why was he still trying to think of more ways to trick Sora? Why was he making up plans in his head to introduce "Guess what's in my mouth" where you were only allowed to use your tongue? Why was there so many conflicting things going on at once in Riku's head? How was he not afraid of the Darkness, but he was afraid of _this_.

That was the suckiest bit of growing up, the certainties you had when you were a kid weren't there anymore, suddenly the world wasn't set on an axis, and anything could go any direction. Anything could arise out of a situation. Things like a friend for life weren't solid and assured anymore, it could all be thrown into jeopardy by a new emotion.

Why'd things have to suck, why couldn't they-

"Ow."

Riku looked across and saw Sora getting up off the ground, winching.

"Lying on tarmac for more than a minute is a stupid idea, my back hurts now."

"I told you that would happen," Riku replied, picking up his iPod and casually clicking the skip button a few times so a different song began playing from the speakers.

Sora crawled over to Riku and lay down on him instead, obviously thinking he'd be softer than tarmac. His head rested against Riku's chest, within which the heart instantly started beating harder and a tingle went down through Riku's body. Sora yawned and his hand went up to stroke Riku's face along the nose. Riku's lips brushed over his palm and Sora smiled up at him, big blue eyes looking into Riku's. It was love in those eyes, that was obvious, but what kind of love? At this moment, it didn't matter.

"Hey, Riku, you know that girl Kairi?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think she'd go out with me?"

Riku went cold. There still wasn't a cloud in the sky, but suddenly, there seemed to be a lot less sun.


End file.
